Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>> Without the licensors, there is no commons. Without an ability to
>> enforce licenses, the concept of copyleft becomes pointless.
>
> You seem to assert that licenses cannot be enforces unless the
> licensor gets carte blanche to harrass licensees with frivolous
> lawsuits. That is not reality.
The licensor *already* has carte blanche to harrass licensees with
fivolous lawsuits. The only thing that changes are the costs.
> Do you think that the GPL and the BSD licenses are both pointless?
I think that a copyleft license is utterly pointless if there's no way
for the licensor to be able to afford to sue infringers. You might as
well just have released the code into the public domain.
>> And, hence, discriminate against rich ones?
>
> We *should* discriminate against software whose authors wants the
> right to order all users and distributors to travel around the globe
> on their whim. Such harassment has nothing at all to do with software
> freedom.
But the freedom to be able to enforce the requirements of a software
license *does* have something to do with software freedom. There are
always tradeoffs.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.devel@srcf.ucam.org